Ice

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's descent thrusters have dispersed overlying soil and exposed a harder substrate that appears to be ice.

And where there's ice, there may be organic compounds, a.k.a. "life".

CNN: Chances dim for climate-change legislation

The Lieberman-Warner carbon tax bill is in trouble:

Without widespread corporate support, passage of the bill - already a long shot at best - becomes even more unlikely this year. President Bush remains opposed. House Democrats have been slow to act.

Besides that, a backdrop of rising gasoline prices and the sluggish economy makes it difficult to win votes for a regulatory scheme that will raise the prices of electricity and gasoline. In fact, a key purpose of the bill is to put a price on the emissions of greenhouse gases, as a way to speed the transition to a clean-energy economy and slow down global warming.

The bill would set a cap on so-called greenhouse gases that would reduce them by 70% by 2050 and puts a price on carbon emissiosns.

"In the long run, you want people who burn carbon to pay more," says John Rowe, the CEO of Exelon, the nation's biggest generator of nuclear power. Still, even Rowe worries that the economy could be shocked if the cost of emitting carbon dioxide rises too quickly. "We don't think the economy can stand $30 to $40 carbon in the early years," he says. Political support for climate action could also erode if consumers revolt. In Europe, where permits to emit carbon have been trading since 2005, it now costs nearly $40 to emit a ton of carbon.

And that's a carbon tax that's not being accepted very well at all.

Yet, all three Presidential contenders support climate-change legislation.

Rush

on Vaclav Klaus, Communism and the Ideology of Environmentalism:

RUSH: You want to hear some conservatism? Vaclav Klaus, president, Czech Republic, yesterday, National Press Club, trying to warn everybody in America that we are being hoaxed with global warming and Algore.



Last night on Fox News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume during the panel discussion, the All Stars, Brit Hume spoke with Juan Williams about Vaclav Klaus, and Hume said, "Do you think Klaus is on the right track here or that he's an alarmist in the other direction?"

WILLIAMS: What he's saying is really interesting to me. I hadn't thought this through. But he's saying it's now beyond the scientists. He is saying in fact that it's an ideology that's seeking to take control of the world, is gonna tell us how to live, what cars to drive, whether you can have a refrigerator and all that, and suggest that it would somehow go beyond politics and not the way that suggests, oh, we have a green movement that everybody gets behind, but in fact would have political consequence not unlike a dictatorship. In all honesty, it struck me as something different. I had not heard this line of argument before because I've never felt threatened by an environmentalist. I think my consciousness is raised.

RUSH: I'm speechless. This is so typical. Here is a learned man, Juan Williams is a smart guy, and only yesterday has he ever heard somebody suggest that the environmental movement is not about environmentalism, that it's about large government, total control, dictatorial powers?

Right on Rush. Right on.

Update: Charles Krauthammer:

Look, on climate change, I'm agnostic. I wrote 20 years ago and believe today that humans pumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere can't be harmless.

But the idea that we know exactly what it does, and that it's catastrophic, I think, is rank speculation. It depends on computer models which are inherently speculative. It depends on a cascade of events and a prediction of a cascade of events, all of which are improbable. And if you add it all up, it is pure speculation.

And I think Klaus is right. By pretending that the issue is closed — one of the news magazines had a cover article that the argument over global warming is over. No arguments in science are over. Newton's laws of motion, people for 300 years imagined was over the debate on that, and they turned out to be wrong.

So the idea that at this early stage in the science the argument is closed — but Klaus is right that it is being used by the new class, people, the experts, the planners, people on the left — they used to say we ought to control society in the name of the working class-that's communism- -and then in the name of state control of industry, and our superior knowledge of how to control society — that is the British socialist model.

All of those models have collapsed. And what they have been handed here is a gift. In the name of the planet, now, these experts are going to tell us how to live, and regulate.

And Klaus is right. It's a way to take these decisions out of the hands of individuals and to put it in the hands of experts acting in the name of the state and in the name of the planet. That is the new socialism, and he's right.

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Vaclav Klaus has a new book and has challenged Al Gore to debate the science of global warming.

Washington - Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic human freedoms. "I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him, and he's not too much willing to make such a conversation," Klaus said. "So I'm ready to do it."

[...]

Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the Goracle to enter the debate. He won't - because he would surely lose and he knows it.

It's been said that the global warming alarmists resemble a pseudo-religion with all the trappings: a struggle for salvation (of the planet), a doomsday scenario, a belief system based on faith (not science) and a high priest in the form of the Goracle Himself.

Klaus has made this analogy to communism before and he knows of what he speaks, having grown up under totalitarian rule. Communism failed both ideologically and as a form of government. Says Klaus:

"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet,"

Despite the best efforts of the lefties, socialism hasn't succeeded in western democracies. But environmentalism has become the new rallying cry for those who would like to impose state control on every aspect of our lives.

Klaus' new book is Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom? Here are some notes from his presentation in Washington:

To make my position and my message clear, I should probably revoke my personal experience. My today’s thinking is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively very sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it.

I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar.

That's worth reading.

I can't find a link where the book can be purchased yet. Let me know in the comments if you know it.

Update: here's a link to Klaus' book from Barnes & Noble.

The horrible effects of climate change

The horror... say it isn't so!

Orange Punch

by Mark Landsbaum:

“There is no proven cause-and-effect relationship between increasing CO2 – a natural gas essential to life on Earth and not a pollutant as the U.S. Supreme Court has concluded – and increasing temperatures. Indeed, in the past decade while CO2 levels have greatly increased, global temperatures have declined. Temperatures over next decade are projected to decrease even more, while greenhouse gases are expected to continue increasing in the atmosphere.

“Perhaps this explains the pell-mell rush to pass new laws, impose new regulations and adopt more fees and taxes. The passage of time seems to be working against global warming alarmism, cooling off opinions even as the atmosphere cools.

“Virtually every human activity, from exhaling to laying concrete to generating electricity, emits CO2. The alternatives government would impose either are impractical, exorbitantly costly or simply don’t exist. But in the meantime, a rash of new regulations and taxes can do great economic harm, putting this state and nation at a competitive disadvantage with the booming economies of China and India, where such economy-crippling impediments aren’t about to be imposed.”

h/t

Ball: The Unholy Alliance

Dr. Tim Ball continues his series of articles at Canada Free Press with The Unholy Alliance that manufactured Global Warming

In previous parts of this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) I’ve shown how a political agenda took over climate science primarily through the UN and specifically the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The agenda was spread to the world at the 1992 Rio Conference. Periodic Reports from the IPCC maintained the focus on CO2 and increased the political pressure. Please understand I am not claiming a conspiracy, but rather a cabal, which is defined as a secret political clique pushing a political agenda; in this case, designed by Maurice Strong.

Although the IPCC was the major vehicle other agencies got caught up quickly as governments became more involved. Results of the IPCC reports were skillfully propagandized so the issue took hold with the media and the public.

Read it all.

The Grantsmanship game

Jerome J. Schmitt at American Thinker says, academic researchers have hit upon a winning formula:

...if one ties one's research project somehow -- even via the most tenuous and flimsy grounds -- to global warming, one's grant proposal will have much greater chance to be selected for funding...

And if one wants one's research grant to be renewed, then one had better conclude that global warming is somehow threatening something!

That helps to explain why you see so many studies these days of the "devastating" effects of global warming, despite all the recent evidence that the earth is not warming.

h/t

Meteorolgist: We need to have cooler heads about AGW

Another dissenter from the so-called "consensus" on global warming appears in the Minneapolis St. Paul Star-Tribune:

Longtime WCCO-TV meteorologist Mike Fairbourne says that the environmental movement is practicing "squishy science" when it ties human activity to global warming.

Fairbourne's assessment Monday came on the same day that the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and announced that it has the signatures of more than 31,000 scientists -- including Fairbourne's -- who agree that the human impact on global warming is overblown.

Fairbourne, who joined WCCO in 1977 and has been a meteorologist for 40 years, said that while there is no doubt that "there has been some warming" of global temperatures in recent years ... there is still a pretty big question mark" about how much of that warming is from human activity.

"squishy science" - I like that!

h/t

CNSNews: Gore Financially Invested in Climate Cause

Fred Lucas at CNSNews.com explains Climate Crusader Al Gore's financial stake in a host of businesses that would profit from new government policies designed to fight global warming.

32K Scientists reject AGW "consensus"

In today's Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon asks, How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?

Good question. Would more than 31,000 do?

the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM's Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of "settled science" and an overwhelming "consensus" in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

It is evident that 31,072 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,021 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,072 American scientists are not "skeptics."

The press conference is set for Monday May 19, at 10:00 AM in Washington, D.C. when Dr. Arthur Robinson (OISM) will Release the Names of almost 32,000 Scientists Rejecting the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Hypothesis.

Solomon's article contains a concise history of the efforts of an ever increasing number of scientists to counter the greenhouse gas propaganda beginning with the mere 47 who signed the “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming,” back in 1992 decrying “the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action” to the 4,000 signatories (including 72 Nobel Prize winners) who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, to the 2001 Oregon Petition:

The Oregon petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

If 17,800 were not enough, perhaps 32,000 will do.

h/t: Icecap.

Facing fears & global warming

John Christy is the distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth Systems Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studying global climate since 1987.

Here's a bit of what he had to say in the Baptist Standard:

I am a climate scientist. My research and that of many others does not lead me to be afraid for the climate’s future. However, I am fearful for other reasons:

• I fear for my science. The truth is, our climate system is so complex that we cannot predict its state even into next month. Nonetheless, I see high-profile individuals (usually untrained in science) making claims with unwavering confidence about the climate’s trajectory and a looming catastrophe.

[...]

I do not see the humility this science demands. In fact, I suspect an anthropologist, isolated from the media, would observe this global-warming fervor as a religion complete with anointed authority figures, sacred documents, creeds, sins requiring absolution, castigation of heretics and even an apocalypse.

• I fear for humanity. When people speak about “doing something about global warming,” please listen carefully. What they advocate are “solutions,” which lead to rationing of energy while having no climate impact. A hidden consequence of these “solutions” is to make energy more expensive—a regressive burden disproportionately inflicted upon the poorest among us.

[...]

The simple truth is that whatever the climate does—and our research at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does not support predictions of an impending disaster—the regulations proposed to date and promoted by the green agenda will have no measurable effect.